For those of us who are on the fence, politically speaking, the recent revelations about Facebook’s suppression and promotion of items from the trending topics are, perhaps, rather disturbing. Yet, that shouldn’t actually be our overriding concern.

It’s no secret that the press and other media channels often have an ideological bias. The ABC, for instance, clearly leans to the right end of the political spectrum, whereas the likes of El Pais and El Periodico are moderately left-wing.

Facebook, especially, has become the global newspaper of the 21st century, and their News Feed it’s front page. This is the point of contact between the users and the cloud of information which is mushrooming in the world’s servers.

The average News Feed has around 1500 possible stories to choose from, which are filtered through each day, but only 20% make your feed, since even a Facebook junkie would have a hard time digesting such a vast amount of gossip.

Facebook’s News Feed relies on hundreds of variables, used in increasingly complex algorithms, to show you what you want to see: you liked so-and-so’s wedding photos, you probably want to see his sister’s holiday snaps from Cancun; you spent more time reading that Guardian film review last week, here’s a bunch more of the new releases.

Despite their claims that “Our whole mission is to show people content that we think that they find meaningful”, the truth is their primary agenda is to engage users in order to maximise their interaction on the site and, in turn, generate advertising revenue.

Eli Pariser, New York Times’ bestselling author, dubbed this “the filter bubble”. This term has become synonymous with a personalised world of information and news, where we are shown only what we want to see, and since these filters are invisible we don’t know what is being hidden from us.

Each and every one of us already lives in our own ‘filter bubble’, but unlike the real word, where we are often confronted with people we don’t agree with and situations we'd rather not be seeing, the online filter bubble completely isolates us from unwelcome stimulus: it’s a personal utopia. One that confirms your beliefs and reinforces your personal world view.

We are pigeonholed by the algorithms and fed information according to our tastes and habits. This has an acute polarising effect. We only rub shoulders with like-minded people and communicate in an echo chamber where everything we hear and see resembles what we are and say.

We shouldn’t shut ourselves off to that annoying vegetarian, grumpy pensioner or bigot that we can’t stand, because somewhere down the line they can teach us something and give us a perspective that algorithms will never factor in.

For those of us who are on the fence, politically speaking, the recent revelations about Facebook’s suppression and promotion of items from the trending topics are, perhaps, rather disturbing. Yet, that shouldn’t actually be our overriding concern.

It’s no secret that the press and other media channels often have an ideological bias. The ABC, for instance, clearly leans to the right end of the political spectrum, whereas the likes of El Pais and El Periodico are moderately left-wing.

Facebook, especially, has become the global newspaper of the 21st century, and their News Feed it’s front page. This is the point of contact between the users and the cloud of information which is mushrooming in the world’s servers.

The average News Feed has around 1500 possible stories to choose from, which are filtered through each day, but only 20% make your feed, since even a Facebook junkie would have a hard time digesting such a vast amount of gossip.

Facebook’s News Feed relies on hundreds of variables, used in increasingly complex algorithms, to show you what you want to see: you liked so-and-so’s wedding photos, you probably want to see his sister’s holiday snaps from Cancun; you spent more time reading that Guardian film review last week, here’s a bunch more of the new releases.

Despite their claims that “Our whole mission is to show people content that we think that they find meaningful”, the truth is their primary agenda is to engage users in order to maximise their interaction on the site and, in turn, generate advertising revenue.

Eli Pariser, New York Times’ bestselling author, dubbed this “the filter bubble”. This term has become synonymous with a personalised world of information and news, where we are shown only what we want to see, and since these filters are invisible we don’t know what is being hidden from us.

Each and every one of us already lives in our own ‘filter bubble’, but unlike the real word, where we are often confronted with people we don’t agree with and situations we'd rather not be seeing, the online filter bubble completely isolates us from unwelcome stimulus: it’s a personal utopia. One that confirms your beliefs and reinforces your personal world view.

We are pigeonholed by the algorithms and fed information according to our tastes and habits. This has an acute polarising effect. We only rub shoulders with like-minded people and communicate in an echo chamber where everything we hear and see resembles what we are and say.

We shouldn’t shut ourselves off to that annoying vegetarian, grumpy pensioner or bigot that we can’t stand, because somewhere down the line they can teach us something and give us a perspective that algorithms will never factor in.